


Stats and the Single Sentinel

by amusewithaview



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Good Wife (TV), The Sentinel, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Awesome Darcy Lewis, DSG - Department of Sentinels and Guides, Darcy Feels, Jane is not Darcy's Guide, Sentinel Senses, the crossover with The Good Wife is really minor, worldbuilding with a female Sentinel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:32:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy was around five the first time she saw the over-sized cat.  She remembers that it had very pointy ears and a little beard.  She remembers that it was huddled, shaking, against the wall.  She remembers its eyes, a funny gold-amber color, and she remembers the shriek her mother let out when she saw the two of them curled up together.</p><p>She doesn’t remember the trip to the DSG, for testing.</p><p>It’s funny what kids’ minds latch onto as important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stats and the Single Sentinel

**Author's Note:**

> I am borrowing from ALL OF THE FANON for the Sentinel stuff, and making up some of my own:
> 
> Sentinels/Guides rated 1-10 (10 being the strongest) and alpha or beta. The alpha/beta thing is NOT an A/B/O thing, it's a hierarchy within pack structure thing. Betas will always follow alphas, regardless of ability rating. A beta can become an alpha, and vice versa, because hierarchy can shift and because _people can change_. Strongest alpha = alpha of Pride. Strongest Pride leader in an area becomes Pride leader of the territory, aka Alpha-Prime.
> 
> So, this started building itself in my brain a long time ago because I wanted Jane&Darcy platonic feels and for some reason my brain took that to a Sentinel and Guide place (there was more, with them being half-sisters and a whole other plot, but I ditched it, so it's not important). I've always wanted to see more fic about **female Sentinels** because there are SO MANY INTERESTING THINGS you can do with that. I've also always wanted to see a **Reluctant Sentinel** because, lets face it, they seem to get most of the drawbacks.
> 
> How scary would it be to know that, if you lose control, you could go into a fugue state? To be pressured to accept this weirdly intimate metaphysical, unbreakable bond? To know that _without_ said bond, you will never be able to live a normal life? Just...FEELINGS, okay?!

She was around five the first time she saw the over-sized cat. She remembers that it had very pointy ears and a little beard. She remembers that it was huddled, shaking, against the wall. She remembers its eyes, a funny gold-amber color, and she remembers the shriek her mother let out when she saw the two of them curled up together.

She doesn’t remember the trip to the DSG, for testing.

It’s funny what kids’ minds latch onto as important.

\---

The first thing Darcy said to Dr. Foster in-person was, “Guide!” Then, seeing the alarmed look on the other brunette’s face, she quickly followed that up with, “But not _my_ Guide. Sorry, um, maybe should have led with that?”

Dr. Foster sort of blinked at her, then asked hesitantly, “Sentinel?”

“Yep.”

Dr. Foster nodded slowly, “That explains the caveat on your application.”

It took Darcy, who had filled out said application along with _several dozen others_ while panicking about her missing science credits in the midst of finals week, a few seconds to remember the ‘caveat’ in question. When she did, she offered Dr. Foster a bitter smile: “'Have license, cannot drive,' right? To be honest, the rest of that sentence should have gone, ‘without the presence of a registered Guide,’ but…” Here Darcy offered a sort of half-shrug and hoped the other woman could fill in the missing pieces.  If an application didn't outright  _ask,_ sometimes it was best not to tell.

The wry twist to Dr. Foster’s expression showed that she understood.

“Still,” Darcy couldn’t help but continue, “what are the odds?”

“Astronomical,” Dr. Foster replied, smiling, and Darcy thought that this situation might actually turn out okay.

\---

Around .17% of the world's population exhibits some sort of measurable psychic ability that falls within the Sentinel/Guide spectrum. According to the ISGC, 75% of all Sentinels world-wide are male (though, to be fair, China seriously skews those numbers, holding at around 95% for the last fifty-odd years, but they’re too large to discount as an outlier), whereas Guides generally run fifty-fifty.

Sentinels and Guides are both rated on two scales: one for ability, the other for disposition. In a stable population, ability ran along the Bell Curve, but disposition was a bit more tricky to decipher, because disposition could change. Generally speaking though, a Class B8 might be stronger than a Class A3, but they would always defer to the latter’s judgment in Pride-related matters. The scale ran 1-10, but there were only two dispositions recognized by the government: alpha and beta.

In the day-to-day life of an unbonded Class B8 Sentinel, this doesn’t usually mean all that much. Darcy did not have a Pride. Darcy did not _want_ a Pride. You didn't have to be bonded to protect the Tribe.  'Pride' and 'Tribe' weren't exactly the same thing, anyway.  She functioned well enough outside the hierarchy and _without_ a Guide, thank you very much.

But _not wanting_ a Pride is distinctly different from _not having_ those instincts.

\---

One week from her eighteenth birthday and, even better, high school graduation, Darcy was positively _humming_ with excess energy. Finally, she would get to _leave_ Back-Edge-of-Nowhere, Wisconsin, and live in a _city_. Granted, the city of Willowdale wasn’t really all that big as far as cities went, but it was _bigger_ and, better yet, in close proximity to some of the _biggest_ cities in the US of A.

Lucas “Lou” Lewis slowly lowered his magazine and gave his daughter’s bouncing leg a pointed glare. “Darling. I love you, you are a beacon of joy and sunshine in my life. Your energy gives me energy… but for the love of little green apples, please get out of my house and go _do something_. It’s Saturday, the sky is blue, and there are things you could be doing that _aren’t_ rattling my coffee cup with your fidgets.”

Darcy stilled her leg. “Suggestions?”

“Go to a movie?”

“Seen ‘em all.”

“Read a book?”

“…you want me to sit _still_ for a few hours?”

“Plot world domination?”

“I already have, like, six plans, dad.”

He sighed deeply, but there was the start of a smile twitching the corner of his mouth, “Then, oh irrepressible child of mine, why don’t you grab my wallet and take the car to go grocery shopping. Pick up some noodles and I’ll make lasagna.”

Darcy considered this for a moment, “Is grocery shopping the _only_ thing I can do?”

Lou rolled his eyes: “If you stop by the bank for me and deposit a check…then I _suppose_ I could be persuaded to spot you a twenty for a trip to that comic place you like.”

“Deal!”

This had probably been his plan from the start, no bargaining necessary, but the byplay was a time-honored tradition in the Lewis household. Darcy was out the door in five minutes, eager to be out and about, even if the ‘about’ was limited to her small (stifling) town.

The three destinations were in a sort of triangle formation, and it would probably be best to hit up the grocery store last – summer sun plus fridgables was not the best of combos – so she headed for the bank first. She had barely gotten one foot in the door, though, before she realized something was very, _very_ wrong.

People were lying on the floor, face-down and trembling and there was a man, a stranger, staring at her from beside the teller window. On his face was a scowl and in his hand was a gun. It felt like everything slowed down as Darcy watched his arm slowly rise, the barrel of the gun lifting towards her. She had time to take in the horrified look on Mr. Brown, the bank teller’s, face. She heard the stranger start to say something and then it was like time sped up… but she was already moving.

These were people she knew, had known for years, and they were terrified. This was the bank she’d gone to on a stupid fiscal-fun field trip in sixth grade. The little girls curled on the ground beside her mother were the Cosca kids, the terrors her friend Lisa had been babysitting for the last few months. These were her people and this was her home and _this man was threatening them_.

Her vision hazed over with red.

\---

Working with Dr. Foster (“Call me ‘Jane.’”) was…weird. Jane was both very like and very unlike Darcy’s general expectations of a Guide. To be fair, Darcy was mostly familiar with DSG Guides, but still, there was something about Jane…

She had the Guide aura, that vague feeling of comfort and you-can-trust-me that they all seemed to project unconsciously, but hers was more contained, somehow. Jane _felt_ sheltered, but not in the same way bonded Guides did. Bonded Guides gave off a feeling of _connectedness:_  you could sort of get an echo of whoever their Sentinel was through the shields that they had constructed together. Jane didn’t have that, there was no ‘echo,’ but she still had the sort of weight to her presence that Darcy associated with bonded Guides.

They’d exchanged their scale/class ratings on the ride from the airport (Jane drove), and Jane was a solid A3. “Moderate empathy ratings when I focus,” she’d elaborated, “but my passive empathy is almost nonexistent.”

“Wow,” Darcy had said, unthinking, “you are _such_ a science-brain.”

Jane had paused at that, then laughed, “Never thought about it that way, but yeah. You?”

Darcy slouched down in her seat, looking out the window: “Sentinel B8.” She braced herself for the surprise, the questions, but there was nothing. When she glanced over, she found Jane frowning, obviously in deep thought. “What are you thinking?” she finally asked after a minute.

“I’m wondering if it’d be better to calibrate a couple of the telescopes for your eyes, you will be able to see _much_ better than I can, but you might not recognize everything we’re looking for…” Jane trailed off into scientific babble about constellations and the air-density properties of the local desert while Darcy just stared at her.

She said ‘B8’ and the woman thought ‘science.’  Yeah, she was definitely going to like Puente Antiguo.

\---

The DSG had lots of smaller offices, located anywhere with a high enough population density, but five main outposts – one in each of the territories that the US was split into. Darcy woke up to the dimly lit white ceiling of one of the iso rooms in the Mid-West DSG.

She lay there for a moment as each of her senses screamed for attention. She hadn’t thought eyes could scream, but they totally could. Her vision kept jumping from normal to telescopic, from ‘hey look at those boring ceiling tiles’ to ‘look at each individual dust mote between you and said tiles.’

Her ears were inundated with the sounds of _her own body,_ which was just plain trippy. Darcy could easily recognize the sound of her own heart, a speedy _ba-thump-thump_ that was steadily getting faster, but there were a whole host of other strange and sometimes sloshy noises that she couldn’t readily identify.

Her mouth tasted gross, but it was almost a normal sort of gross. The gross that everyone woke up with early in the morning, only magnified to the nth degree. She could taste everything she’d eaten since she last brushed her teeth. She could taste the remnants of soured mint from when she’d _last_ brushed her teeth!

When she took a deep breath, she could smell…herself. She was obviously alone and had been for some time. The last person to come in had been male, a little sweaty, and used Irish Spring soap – the same kind her dad used. The room had a gentle non-smell, but Darcy winced as her shampoo, body wash, and the singed smell of her straightened hair all mixed into a funk that nearly had her gagging.

Touch was the only sense that wasn’t going completely batty. She could feel things, but everything she felt was…nice? Darcy rubbed the sheet under her hands with the tips of her fingers and smiled, cotton (was it cotton?) had never felt so good before.

A soft _shush_ noise came from a corner of the room, and Darcy sat up. A woman walked in, very slowly, holding both hands up in the classic 'I come in peace' stance.  Darcy's eyes were instantly caught on the palm of one of her hands and the whorls and dips and lines she could see there.

“…down, Lewis. Picture it like the heat dial on a hair straightener and turn it _down_. Dial your senses down, Lewis. One at a time: focus on sound, then sight, then smell, then touch, then taste. You need to turn your senses down, Lewis. Picture it like the heat dial on a – there you go.”

Darcy blinked a few times, now able to focus on a face. “Huh.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Did they send you in because you look like my mom?” Possibly not the most politic of responses and not actually an answer to the question she’d just been asked, but Darcy felt justified: the woman before her was a fair-skinned brunette with blue eyes, it was a weird coincidence at best and uncomfortable manipulation at worst.

The woman didn’t take offense, she smiled, “No, they called me in because I’m the highest rated Guide in the area.”

“I’m in the Chicago DSG, aren’t I?” Darcy’s eyes widened, “Holy shit, you’re Alicia Florrick!” She was speaking to one of the Seconds of the Mid-West Alpha-Prime, which upgraded this entire experience from merely ‘trippy’ to ‘oh shit.’

“Yes, and you’re a newly-awakened Sentinel whose first experience _as_ a Sentinel was a feral event that stopped a bank robbery. Now, how are you feeling?”

“Better. I don’t really remember what happened, though.”

“You will,” Alicia informed her, “it will come back to you in bits and pieces.”

“Did I…I didn’t kill anyone, right?”

There was a brief pause, and Darcy could tell Alicia was choosing her words carefully: “You didn’t kill anyone, but the gunman’s accomplice may never be able to walk unassisted again.”

Darcy gulped, swallowing back the urge to cry. She had been registered latent since childhood, but she’d never thought – she’d hoped – this wasn’t what she wanted. She wasn’t one of those kids who dreamed of becoming a Sentinel, maybe because her mother had drummed all the downsides into her ear from diagnosis till puberty.

“I know that this is difficult, but you will be alright, Darcy.”

She knew the other woman was being sincere, and that was comforting.

She also knew that they had drastically different definitions of ‘alright,’ and that wasn’t.

\---

She didn’t notice anything strange about the way she and Jane worked with each other until Dr. Selvig showed up. His arrival threw her off, made her edgy. It was weird to have him around, especially when it was clear that he didn’t particularly like her. She chalked her discomfort up to being around a stranger after having had almost a month of nothing but Jane, her, and what friends she could talk into Skyping, but it was Erik who sat her down and pointed out what should have been obvious.

“You’ve formed a rudimentary Pride,” he told her, watching her sharply over the edge of his coffee cup.

Darcy’s hand spasmed around her own cup and she choked, sputtering out a shocked, “What?!”

He quirked a brow at her, “You hadn’t noticed?”

She slowly set her coffee down and, with shaking hands, grabbed a napkin to wipe up the side of the cup. “I – no. We couldn’t have. I can’t. We’re not bonded!”

“No,” he acknowledged, “but you could be.”

“I…what?”

He scoffed at her, “I know that not all Sentinels wait for their ‘one true Guide,’ don’t play games.”

“Twenty-two,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“Twenty-two,” she said again, a little louder, “that’s the percentage of Sentinel-Guide bonds that are between 'mismatches.' I know it’s possible. I _know_. But I never thought – I don’t…I don’t want a bond! Should I leave? Can I leave? I have another couple of weeks before my internship is finished, but do you think she’d let me leave? I - ”

Erik reached out and grasped her shaking hands, looking concerned instead of suspicious for the first time. “Calm down, Darcy. Take a few deep breaths.” He waited while she followed his instructions. “I feel I owe you an apology.”

“What? Why?”

He shrugged, looking a little sheepish, “I thought that you might be trying to, ah, ‘seduce’ Jane into bonding with you. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone’s tried to get close to her because her star is so bright, but bonds are nigh unbreakable. I didn’t want to see that happen to Jane, but it’s clear that I was misinterpreting things. You really hadn’t noticed?”

Darcy shook her head, still too rattled to really parse what he was saying, beyond more-than-mild offense. She went through the last few weeks of Erik’s presence and how it had made her feel, how she acted around Jane, and couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that he was right: they had formed a Pride.

“We haven’t bonded,” she said after a moment, “not, like, _together_. It must just be the start of a Pride-bond, which isn't the same as a _bond_ -bond.  We can't have bonded like _that_.  If we had, I wouldn’t have disliked – um,” she glanced up at him, then away, “ _been uncomfortable_ around you. She already sees you as part of her family. If we were bonded, so would I.”

Erik nodded, “That makes sense. Again, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

“I don’t want to bond with Jane. I – I don’t think I want to _bond_. I haven’t talked with her about it, but I’m not sure Jane does, either. It’s just been…nice. Working with someone who I know can pull me out, who I don’t really have to worry about zoning on…it’s great,” Darcy explained in a small voice.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what level are you?”

“I’m a B8.”

Erik’s eyes went wide with surprise, then consideration. “That must be difficult.”

Darcy laughed outright, slumping back in her seat. “I didn’t ask to be like this, you know? And shows, movies, books, they like to talk about how awesome it is, how great it is to do things nobody else can do, how easy it is to find a career, how awesome bonding is, but they don’t really talk about the downsides. How the tendency to zone means you can’t drive, have to be careful where you go and who you go with. They don’t talk about all of the pressure to go into _certain fields_ , and they sure as shit don’t talk about the twenty-two percent.”

Erik just listened to her, no judgment in his eyes.

She reached for the napkin she’d used and started tearing it into long, thin strips. “Twenty-two percent who bond are mismatched, but of that twenty-two, most of them _did_ meet their match,” she smiled at Erik’s surprise, “they met their match and they decided that they didn’t want the bond. A true bond like that is best for your abilities, makes you ‘all that you can be,’ but it’s…” Darcy shivered, “it’s a level of – of _intimacy_ that most people outside the spectrum can’t comprehend. You are literally _bound_. I mean, mismatches are still bonds, but there’s a little more wiggle-room.”

“But you don’t want that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want a bond, I don’t…” she sighed. “I feel the – the drive is what they call it, I think – to protect the ‘Tribe.’ That part doesn’t bother me, I mean, I believe in making the world a better place. It’s just…I always wanted to do that through, like, policy, you know? I want to protect the Tribe by going into the government, and that’s cool, they encourage that… but I’m a woman _and_ a B8. The first one means society’s views are against me, the second one means the DSG’s are.”

Darcy lifted a hand and rubbed the heel of her palm into her eye, wiping away a few tears in the process. “Sorry to dump all that on you, geez!”

Erik shrugged, “I asked, and it sounds like you needed to say some of it.”

“I guess,” it was her turn to shrug as she returned to braiding strips of napkin.

“Darcy?” He waited until she looked up to smile at her, “I would be honored to be a part of your pseudo-Pride. Well, for as long as you’re with us, I suppose.”

“I – thanks, Erik. I… yeah, thanks.”

\---

In hindsight, it was a  _really_ good thing that Erik pointed out the Pride-thing to her before all the shit went down.   _Knowing_ why she was territorial about their workspace and trailers (and Jane and Erik) went a long way towards helping her keep her cool when the G-men invaded.  It also helped that Thor was so very… _Thor_.  It was pretty easy to believe he was an alien: he smelled different, and he  _felt_ different to her's and Jane's other senses.  Weird, but kinda cool.

It was also neat to see him and the boss-lady interact.  It was like Jane became  _more herself_ with him.  She already felt settled, but he made her moreso.  Darcy actually started to wonder if, if he stayed much longer, she might start to get a sense of him in Jane's shields.  He wasn't a Sentinel, he wasn't a Guide, either…but he kind of felt like both, almost.  So did his buddies, when they showed up.

She was able to keep her cool until she zoned on the smell of the burnt asphalt.  They lucked out that 1) Fandral was near enough to spirit her to safety when she froze and 2) she didn't come out of the zone feral.  It helped that Jane was the one to bring her out, the Pride-bond kept her stabilized in the midst of what was, effectively, a war zone.  Sucked that the G-man picked up on her Sentinel-self, though.  She'd gotten this far staying off any agency's radar, and she'd hoped to get further.

When all was said and done, and their equipment returned, she just wandered the space, brushing her hands along the boxes and papers and gadgets that made up Jane's equipment, adjusting to the smells of the people who'd touched them and the places they'd been.  Jane followed along behind her, brushing the things she touched, while Erik (too busy to play duckling) made a point of brushing up against stuff in his general area and usual routes through the madness.  They were a small Pride, a strange Pride, but…she found that she liked it.  It was…nice.

\---

She stared down at the contract that Jane had slipped onto her desk that afternoon. They were about to pack everything up, all the research Jane could get done from the Antiguo installation basically finished. The first contract Jane had ever passed her had been for an extension of her internship, one that could hypothetically give her grad school credits – if she ever decided to go. _This_ contract was different. _This_ was a one-year contraction of services with actual pay as Jane’s assistant (yay, grant money!).

Did she want to do this for another year? Should she? SHIELD had already expressed interest in her (yikes!), probably only piqued once they’d dug up her testing file, and there was always grad school (ugh), or maybe even a big-girl job in a field actually related to her degree (if she was lucky). Or she could go back to the DSG, try and find her match (she'd never really considered it before). She felt like she was in limbo, waiting for something, but she didn’t know what.

Darcy scowled down at the contract, then stomped off to bed. She’d sleep on it.

That night, for the first time in years, Darcy dreamt of her spirit animal.

She dreamt that she was walking through a snowy forest, mountains on her left, the soft trickling sounds of a river coming from somewhere to her right. Her snow leopard padded beside her, keeping pace and nudging her every so often to indicate where it wanted her to go.

They walked for she knew not how long before reaching a clearing where another big cat sat, shivering. She recognized the pointy-earred cat with a beard and gold-amber eyes, and it recognized her. It let out a soft churring sound, oddly inquisitive.

Darcy looked down at her leopard to find it staring at the other cat, which her adult self realized looked like some sort of lynx. “Do I stay or do I go?” she asked, not sure who she was talking to.

The leopard rubbed its head against her knee, almost making her stumble with the force, before crossing the clearing to curl up around the lynx. Almost immediately after settling, it started washing the lynx’s head. The lynx made soft grumbly-sounding noises, but was obviously leaning into the touch, eyes slitted in pleasure.  Darcy’s hands twitched with the phantom feeling of coarse fur, thick and cold, and something she’d felt once before.

Leopard and lynx paused their actions and looked up to stare at her, waiting.

When Darcy woke up, she signed the contract. She didn’t jump when her leopard appeared in the real world and curled itself around her legs, but it was a near thing.

“Well, at least _you_ approve,” Darcy muttered, thinking of the upcoming phone call with her dad. “Glad I’m making _someone_ happy.”

Being a Sentinel wasn’t her favorite thing, but it was a part of her, and she wasn’t going to deny it anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Note for those of you interested in stats:  
> Worldwide, the Sentinel/Guide population/ability breakdown runs thusly (based on a HEAVILY MODIFIED bell curve)…  
> 240,000 people score a 10.  
> 1,680,000 people score an 8 or 9.  
> 8,160,000 people score 4, 5, 6, or 7.  
> 1,680,000 people score a 2 or 3.  
> 240,000 people score around a 1.  
> Additional note: for Steve (and his Guide), this scale goes to 11.
> 
> Note for those of you interested in The Good Wife:  
> In my head, this takes place in an AU where the stress of the divorce made Alicia come fully online as a Guide (she'd been repressing, which is not OOC). She still joined the firm, but when she did, she met her Sentinel, and bonding made her Hella Strong. She and her Sentinel (I am still not 100% sure who I want that to be) became the Seconds to the Territory Alpha (aka the Alpha-Prime).
> 
> Note on the lynx:  
> Yes, I know who it belongs to, and no, I'm not telling. There's a decent hint in there, if you know where to look. For the record, I didn't actually intend the snow to be a hint? Snow leopards and lynxes both tend to live in snowy areas. Also, this is totes part of a larger universe that is currently living in my head, but I don't know if/when I'll be able to get it out on the page, so...oneshot!
> 
> Thoughts, comments, concerns? Let me know!


End file.
